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Track and field: Emma Coburn ready to cap her CU Buffs career in style

Steeplechase star chasing NCAA title

By Brian Howell Buffzone.com

Posted:
06/05/2013 05:28:23 PM MDT

Updated:
06/05/2013 10:53:44 PM MDT

When Emma Coburn arrived at Colorado as a freshman in the fall of 2008, she was considered the slow girl on the Buffaloes cross country and track and field teams.

"We would joke and make fun of me because my times were so slow," Coburn said. "I was the slowest girl coming in."

Nobody is laughing at her now.

This week at the NCAA track and field championships in Eugene, Ore., Coburn is the favorite to win her second national title in the 3,000-meter steeplechase. The semifinals are scheduled for Thursday, with the finals on Saturday.

However she does this week Coburn will put an end to one of the greatest careers in CU history.

"I've been healthy and it's all gone really well," she said of her career at CU. "There's nothing but joy when I look back at my time at Colorado."

Coburn was actually quite good in high school. While at Crested Butte Community School, she won eight Class 2A state titles in track and field and finished fourth in the Class 3A state cross country meet in each of her last two years. Coming from a small school, though, her times didn't really match up with others.

Part of that was because she spent so much time playing other sports. Between basketball, volleyball and hockey, she didn't put a lot of miles on her legs. When she did run, however, she used great mechanics.

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Coburn said her high school coach, Trent Sanderson, must have taken all those things into consideration when he told her she'd be in the Olympics some day.

"I had a coach in high school who totally believed in me," she said.

CU head coach Mark Wetmore and assistant Heather Burroughs then made her a star.

"The coaches knew what they were doing and took me and made something good happen out of it," Coburn said.

CU's Emma Coburn, here during the 2012 U.S. Olympic Trials, will close out her career as a Buff at the NCAA Championships this week.
(
Eric Gay
)

At CU, she qualified for cross country nationals three times, including a 20th-place finish in 2011 to earn All-American honors.

Track and field has always produced her best results, however. This is her fourth trip to nationals in the steeplechase. She was 11th as a freshman in 2009 (former Buff Jenny Barringer Simpson won the title). In 2010, she was national runner-up and then won the title in 2011. She redshirted in 2012 so she could concentrate on earning a spot on the Olympic team.

"It's been a super slow and steady progression," she said of her career. "There's not one moment that I can look back and say, 'Wow, that was a breakthrough race.' At the same time, there's never been a big heartbreak."

The steady progression began in high school, when the steeplechase started becoming her specialty. Twice she ran the 2,000-meter steeplechase at the Nike Outdoor Nationals, placing in the top four both times. She was second in 2008, running the fifth-best time in high school history.

Races kept getting bigger from there, until she reached the ultimate stage a year ago and competed for Team USA at the Summer Olympics in London.

Given her success in the steeplechase, it wasn't much of a surprise that she made the Olympic team, but she said it was still a thrill. Teammate Shalaya Kipp (who won the NCAA title in 2012 and is redshirting this year) also made the U.S. team.

Russia's Yuliya Zaripova won the gold medal with a time of 9 minutes, 6.72 seconds, while Coburn ran the best time of her life, 9:23.54. Her only regret is that she didn't finish stronger, as Germany's Gesa Felicitas Krause out-kicked her for eighth place, just .02 ahead of Coburn. Kipp didn't reach the finals.

Coburn has competed in the steeplechase just three times since London, but her season-best time of 9:28.26, at the Payton Jordan Invitational in Palo Alto, Calif., on April 28, is more than 22 seconds better than any other runner in the country.

It would be a surprise if Coburn doesn't win this week, but she said she can't think that way.

"I still have to respect it and take it seriously and know that there's a target on my back," she said. "I have to have precision when I go over the barriers and I have to be focused and treat every race like it's the biggest, most important one.

"This is not a meet to be overlooked and it's still really, really special."

This one, however, might be more special than most. She'll go on to a professional career and possibly has another trip to Olympics in her future. But, this will be the last week she wears her CU uniform.

"I get a little sad when I say it's my last time putting that jersey on," she said. "I'm a very sentimental person, so it makes me a little sad, just because I grew up always wanting to be a Buff and they were always my team.

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